Just a quickie (Warning! this isn't your typical silly post)

Disclaimer:

I know all 6 of you usually come for the laughs and stay for the explosions, but this is not that day, this is a serious goddamn post, so stick around

today is november 11th, veterans day. Normally I don't post this sort of "oh sappy holiday" bull, but veterans day is special, its unique. It is a truly american holiday, where we celebrate the truly important americans, not our congressmen, not our senators, not our presidents, not our supreme court justices, not our politicans, our writers, our demonstrators, No. Today is about soldiers, the people who have fought and died for us. They died for my right to write about dipshit parents and make jokes, they died so you can read this, they died so we could all live in a better, freer place, a place were Nicole ritchie is famous and good charlotte is liked, but a place were we have truly great people too, all of which would be for naught without our soldiers. so to any vets or current soldiers reading this, may God be with you today and every day, and I leave you with a comment I found on Kissing suzy kolber, one of the best blogs on earth, about today.

WHAT IS A VET

Some veterans bear visible signs of their service: a missing limb, a jagged scar,a certain look in the eye. Others may carry the evidence inside them: a pinholding a bone together, a piece of shrapnel in the leg – or perhaps another sortof inner steel: the soul’s ally forged in the refinery of adversity. Except in parades, however, the men and women who have kept America safe wear no badge or emblem. You can’t tell a vet just by looking.

what is a vet?

He is the cop on the beat who spent six months in Saudi Arabia sweating two gallonsa day making sure the armored personnel carriers didn’t run out of fuel

He is the barroom loudmouth, dumber than five wooden planks, whose overgrown frat-boy behavior is outweighed a hundred times in the cosmic scales by four hoursof exquisite bravery near the 38th parallel.

She or he—is the nurse who fought against futility and went to sleep sobbing everynight for two solid years in Da Nang.

He is the POW who went away one person and came back another—or didn’t come back AT ALL.

He is the Quantico drill instructor who has never seen combat—but has savedcountless lives by turning slouchy, no-account rednecks and gang members intoMarines, and teaching them to watch each other’s backs.

He is the parade—riding Legionnaire who pins on his ribbons and medals with aprosthetic hand.

He is the career quartermaster who watches the ribbons and medals pass him by.

He is the three anonymous heroes in The Tomb Of The Unknowns, whose presence atthe Arlington National Cemetery must forever preserve the memory of all theanonymous heroes whose valor dies unrecognized with them on the battlefield or in the ocean’s sunless deep.

He is the old guy bagging groceries at the supermarket—palsied now andaggravatingly slow—who helped liberate a Nazi death camp and who wishes all daylong that his wife were still alive to hold him when the nightmares come

He is an ordinary and yet an extraordinary human being—a person who offered some of his life’s most vital years in the service of his country, and who sacrificedhis ambitions so others would not have to sacrifice theirs.

He is a soldier and a savior and a sword against the darkness, and he is nothingmore than the finest, greatest testimony on behalf of the finest, greatest nationever known.

So remember, each time you see someone who has served our country, just lean over and say Thank You. That’s all most people need, and in most cases it will meanmore than any medals they could have been awarded or were awarded.

Two little words that mean a lot, “THANK YOU.”

Lastly, a quote

“It is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us freedom of the press. Itis the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech. It is thesoldier, not the campus organizer, who has given us the freedom to demonstrate.It is the soldier, who salutes the flag, who serves beneath the flag, and whose coffin is draped by the flag, who allows the protester to burn the flag.”

Father Dennis Edward O’Brien, USMC

(no credit goes to me for any of the above except the parts I wrote credit to orton hears an oot in the KSK comments secrtion for getting it from footballguys.com)

thank you, and god bless